Defence Regulation 18B - Expansion in May 1940

Expansion in May 1940

The authorities dramatically revised their approach to the British far right in the late spring of 1940. The recent rapid seizure of power by Vidkun Quisling in Norway, a politician whose career superficially resembled that of Sir Oswald Mosley, raised the possibility of a fifth column deposing the government. The fall of the Low Countries and the invasion of France led to a very real fear of invasion. Then on 20 May 1940 a raid on the home of Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the U.S. Embassy, disclosed that Kent had stolen copies of thousands of telegrams including those from Winston Churchill to Franklin Roosevelt. Kent was an associate of Archibald Maule Ramsay, an openly anti-semitic MP.

This opened the possibility that Ramsay might have used the privilege of Parliament to reveal the telegrams, about which Churchill had not told the Cabinet, thereby possibly endangering his government. It would also reveal Roosevelt was trying to help Churchill while proclaiming his support for neutrality in public. The Cabinet decided in favour of widespread detentions of the far right on 22 May, which required an amended version of the Regulation - 18B (1A). One of the first to be arrested, in the early morning of 23 May, was Sir Oswald Mosley, whilst others arrested later included Admiral Sir Barry Domvile and Sir Reginald Goodall. Popular reaction was strongly in favour, with one reader writing to The Times to note with satisfaction that news of Mosley's arrest had been carried in the fifth column. By December 1940, there were more than a thousand detainees in custody.